'Stand your ground' is misunderstood

Thursday

Oct 10, 2013 at 12:01 AMOct 11, 2013 at 9:08 AM

Like humor, propaganda is best when there is truth or relevance within it. Thus it was in the Oct. 3 Dispatch article "200 protest 'stand your ground' gun bill," about a proposed change in the existing Ohio law to allow (or exempt) an Ohio resident from having to flee from a burglar or robber if he has a reasonable option to flee. This is called the "stand your ground" option.

Like humor, propaganda is best when there is truth or relevance within it. Thus it was in the Oct. 3 Dispatch article "200 protest 'stand your ground' gun bill," about a proposed change in the existing Ohio law to allow (or exempt) an Ohio resident from having to flee from a burglar or robber if he has a reasonable option to flee. This is called the "stand your ground" option.

There was in this article a needless paragraph that stated: "Often described as the 'stand your ground' provision, such laws came under national security after the Florida trial at which Geroge Zimmerman, who is white, was acquitted of murder in the shooting of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, who was black."

The issue of standing your ground was never considered or mentioned by the police on the scene, their supervisors, the prosecuting attorney, the grand jury or the defending attorneys. That "issue" was brought up only in the news media and in the assembled crowds that, for the most part, were protesting the trial results. This was done on the local and national levels, even though "stand your ground" was never an issue in this case.

The second bit of propaganda was the reference to Zimmerman being white. Before the trial, he was correctly listed as being Cuban-Hispanic. It was The New York Times that created a new ethnic classification for this case: white Hispanic. The Dispatch article made a point that Zimmerman was white.

The cited paragraph is essentially correct in denotation, but not in connotation. It appears to be an effort to keep the pot boiling in areas not having to do with the point of the article, which was legislative efforts in Ohio to bring a form of balance for citizens against those who would attack them on the street.